“The Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist” was painted in 1500 by Luca Signorelli. The fresco sits in the Cathedral of Orvieto in Italy. (image in the public domain)

By Norman Farmer | Columnist

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI writes that “in modern man, even in today’s Christian, the awareness of eternal life has become astoundingly weak; you will rarely get to hear a sermon about heaven, hell, and purgatory today,” in “God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life” (Ignatius, 2003). And here, today’s greatest living theologian quotes a predecessor greater still: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “It is as if modern man had had a tendon cut, so that he can no longer run toward his original goal, as if his wings had been clipped, as if his spiritual awareness of transcendence had withered. How can that have come about?” In 1500, the artist Luca Signorelli already answered that question with this sermon-huge fresco in the great Cathedral of Orvieto called “The Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist.” Isolated clumps of people huddle separately in a vast, even desolate piazza before a foreboding temple surrounded by ominous dark figures. In the foreground, the false prophet and purveyor of false doctrine who bears an uncanny but chilling resemblance to Christ, preaches to a compliant crowd (1 Jn 4:2-5). At far left, a brutal serial murder is underway before the eyes of indifferent onlookers. Next in, a young woman negotiates the price of her body with a sumptuously dressed old merchant whose purse full of money has just outbid the flashy looks of the indignant young ruffian whom she spurns. Under the right elbow of the Antichrist, two old men gesture for calm so they may hear the smooth and enticing words (1 Jn 2:18-19; 2 Jn 7-8). Between the young woman and her jilted lover, though, there appears a tragically beautiful face: a young friar, naively, innocently and raptly hanging on every word the Antichrist speaks, falling unbeknownst into sure damnation as in the distance the evil one orders people executed and even resurrects a man. Nearby, a huddled group of clerics resists the Antichrist’s temptations through prayer, though indeed the foretold end approaches. For from the sky above God’s angel hurls the false one to his destruction, but bringing with it a rain of plague on all below who did not seek shelter in him. Because human thought requires some kind of graphic, a close-up will enable us to parse Signorelli’s image and reflect upon the very concept of a person (and he is a person!) – called Antichrist, who has among our very selves so “withered” present-day “spiritual awareness.” The face is hard, evil, calculating; the eyes are set, not upon those hanging upon his words but upon hearing precisely what the devil says in his ear. Finally, there is the artist’s brilliant and climactic use of optical illusion (called “trompe l’oeil”), whereby the left arm (“sinistra” in Latin) of Antichrist appears to be an extension of the devil’s own very sinister (i.e. “ominous”) left arm (read paragraph 676 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for more teaching on the Antichrist). Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle ... by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander the earth seeking the ruin of souls.